Band vs. Movie

Ran into this photo of the Parenthetical Girls, which is a recreation of the poster for A Tale of Two Sisters. (I like to think it was an homage, but I'm sure it was just a blatant ripoff.) It's such a striking photo that I still remember chatting with D in Tak about what the movie might be about. I even bought it the year I got back from Japan, although I still haven't watched it. (I mean, I'm looking at it right now. I've never been into horror movies, but it's been...almost three years. Whoops.)

I think it's interesting that the movie poster intrigued me enough to buy the movie, but the band photo just seems like someone's cool idea for a photo shoot, and I probably won't be checking out their music.

[Edited to add: Fine, so there was a clip just sitting there, on the page I snagged the photo from. And the band isn't bad. But the photo still rubs me the wrong way.]

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Concerning translations.

A post on boingboing concludes with the following quote from Madame Bovary:

Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

It's one of my favorite quotes; one that I picked up in high school. Not because I've read Flaubert's book, or watched the movie, but because Carl Sagan's book, Contact, opens a chapter with it. But it reads a little bit differently:

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

I don't care which is the proper translation, I just know which one I like better.

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